Archive for the ‘All-American Girls Professional League of Baseball’ tag

It was all about the road and the grassy fields of summer, especially if you weren’t in the big leagues. When this country was a lot less equal, before Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey changed sports forever, separate and unequal was the guiding principle of baseball. The Antique Automobile Club of America is recognizing that era at its museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Beginning June 1 and running through September 15, the museum marks the history of transport in both the Negro Leagues and the All-American Girls Professional League of Baseball, as it was called. The exhibit will encompass photos and other memorabilia, autograph sessions with former players and at least one former league bus. In the above photo is an early team bus, built on a Mack chassis and used by the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1935.

Then there’s this post-war photo of the Newark Eagles in their team bus, a Flxible Clipper, perhaps powered by a straight-eight Buick in its customary position underneath the passenger floor. We should note that Hinchliffe Stadium in nearby Paterson, a former Negro League park now recognized as a historic site, once hosted both Midget and stock car races on a speedway around its warning track. So did Dexter Park on the Brooklyn-Queens boundary.

These are the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daisies of the Girls League, posing with their presumed manager in front of their bus, revealed by its front script to be an Aerocoach produced by General American in East Chicago, Indiana. William K. Wrigley founded the Girls League during World War II, and it continued playing until 1954. For more information, visit www.aacamuseum.org.